Not just tourists but the vast majority of everyday cyclists need gear ranges other than the dominant market offerings, which mostly seem oriented at professional racers. There is no utility in 53X11 for everyday cyclists on 700C wheels, despite what the downhill pedalers believe. Those lads are just failing to understand the energy-saving of applying gravity with an aerodynamic crouch for a few minutes.
Even racing lads (and lasses) of olden days had 52X13 as their top gear. Many tourists had 48X14 or 15. As to the low gears, the foolish arrangement of yesteryear was a bottom of 42X21. Even them supermen of Le Tour and similar now have a 39X28 or even 30.
My own conclusion from these historical facts (and experience of them in my own cycling of past and present) is that even fit lads doing Audax, never mind tourists, need a top gear of no more than 52X13; and 50X14 will serve a goodly portion of them. On the other hand, a 34X34 seems like a good idea for even a club rider, crawling home after 80 or 90 hard miles with the bonk impending. Or going up a series of the more viscous climbs to found in The Lakes, The Pennines, The West Welsh valleys and The Highlands.
So, without inventing yet another special Touring Groupset with standards and parameters unique rather than the same as other groupset stuff, how about:
A return to already designed and proven successful items;
A retention of existing standards of fit and interoperability;
The provision of gear bits that provide useful rather than fashionable gear ranges.
If I can disembowel two cassettes to make a "proper" one for my purposes, so can Mr Shimano or Mr SRAM or any other provider of bicycle gearing. I've done the two-to-make-one thing to get: 13-30; 14-32; 14-36; 15-27. These go with either a "standard" triple Shimano-style 52-39-30 or a Spa such as 46-36-26. They have a high enough top gear, a low enough crawler and small jumps between the sprocket ratios, with none wasted.
The triple chainset is not so much a provider of teeny ratio jumps (a 9 or 10-speed cassette can easily provide those) as a device to set the rear ratios for the type of terrain:
Big ring for fast, flat, slightly undulating, wind-behind and other rapid-progress roads.
Middle ring for most riding that goes between about 10-20mph.
Little ring for roads generally going up, inclusive of very-up.
I have a NOS Dura Ace 10 speed triple as well as a similar Ultegra. They're high quality and function very well. When they wear out I'd have to buy a Tiagra or Sora - functionally fine but a missed opportunity for profit from those such as myself too easily seduced by a shiny man-jewel.
Also, I resent the need to built the cassette I want from two others, rather than it being available off the shelf and at half the spend. Every bluddy cassette these days seems to start at 11. Nae use!
Cugel
“Practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence are usually the slaves of some defunct economist”.
John Maynard Keynes
